


daedalus after the fall

by pepperedfox



Category: Kagerou Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperedfox/pseuds/pepperedfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall. Kenjirou drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	daedalus after the fall

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion drabble to one of my previous pieces, Icarus Before the Fall.

Murder was easy to commit, to his surprise. Time died quickly when unwatched and sleep needed only a sharp memory to kill. Once he learned this, Kenjirou slaughtered the unchanging days with the air of a butcher, melting his waking memories into an indistinguishable mound like flame to a candle wax. He used to dream when he collapsed from exhaustion, his mind throwing him scrambling into the raw, bleeding sky that dropped boulders from its maw. Nowadays, he was wise enough to swallow pills to induce naps.

It was difficult to stop once he started. Those nights he spent gazing at pictures were now funneled into a dull state of wakefulness, the position of the sun no longer of importance to him. Each hour that passed, no matter what significance the world attached to it, were all the same. The leave they gave him from the classroom cut the last external force that structured his life. The glare of the sun blurred with the endless flicker of screens, leaving the world a smudge.  
  
Yet he lived. Kenjirou, who could no longer sleep peacefully without the light weight of green and blue capsules, learned to plant his feet in this new, formless world molded from the corpses of sleepless days. Sometimes, he glanced at the mirror. With each step he advanced his goal, the bags under his eyes advanced as well.  
  
Nowadays, the house remained empty of human life. Here, on the scuffled floor, was where he would lift little Ayano high into the air like a bird. Here, where the weathered brown of the tablecloth drooped, was once the stage for lively dinners between their family. Here, on the porch, bare feet used to tan in the summer heat and here, in their room— _his_ room— was where they built their first bed, ordered from a cheap catalog with assembly required.  
  
It was remarkable how death was so quiet, how the exit of a loved one was not announced with trumpets or fanfare but in the spaces of where they used to be. Out of necessity, Kenjirou learned to see the space around the emptiness. For when he paused upon that emptiness, it was too bare for his eyes to withstand.  
  
Dust coated the cabinet with a thin layer. It felt unclean as he dragged his finger along its edge. Ayaka hated the lack of care in anything and anyone. She told him this with a not too gentle smile when he first drug his feet up to her desk in an interrupted effort to ask her on a date. It was a virtue she instilled in him and her children, as she believed that those most loved would display love in return. Kenjirou, half-awake in his life and apathetic towards the world at large, did not possess that love. It was only after he straightened his back and walked to her with a head held high that she would accept him and love him as he learned to love himself.  
  
But those rewards of love were gone. Ayaka, crushed beneath stone. Ayano, his precious daughter who tried to fly for the sake of her family. And those three children, those who cast sidelong glances at him as he strapped himself to his chair in self-repentance, locked away from the outside world and present; those he loved as dearly as his own blood—  
  
They, too, eroded from his world. Slipped away like the moon’s reflection on the surface of rippling water.  
  
He was left only with his tools, his stained hands, and those eyes, yes, these monstrous red eyes that burned as if he had gazed at the sun for too long.  
  
Those that are the most loved will return that love, Ayaka had taught him.  
  
With his lines of code and the awakening of the boy, he will prove that reasoning to be true. The world of love his family had given him will be repaid with a world of Kenjirou’s creation, one better suited than this stagnant corpse gutted and left behind.


End file.
